Free Jazz, Futurism, Funk and Ferocity

1. STEVE LEHMAN OCTET “Travail, Transformation and Flow” (Pi) The year’s head-spinning jazz release came from the alto saxophonist Steve Lehman, who employed spectrum analysis as a compositional tool. That might have been a liability if the album weren’t such a breathtaking accomplishment, a blast of urban futurism at once hypnotic, kinetic and kaleidoscopic. And funky.

3. HENRY THREADGILL’S ZOOID “This Brings Us to, Volume I” (Pi) Spring loaded and sharp cornered, this long-awaited studio release from Mr. Threadgill, the august avant-garde multireedist and composer, suggests a mutant species of free jazz, wherein “free” and “jazz” are both hopelessly inexact terms. Zooid, a group as industrious as it is intuitive, makes his case with style.

4. VIJAY IYER TRIO “Historicity” (ACT) On his version of a cover album, the pianist Vijay Iyer scrambles and strengthens the elixirs, dashing off bold new prescriptions for the postmillennial piano trio. The drummer Marcus Gilmore and the bassist Stephan Crump lend more than support, though they do that too.

5. GRIZZLY BEAR “Veckatimest” (Warp) The sweetest harmonists in indie-rock are also among the shrewdest: this Brooklyn foursome made this album an enveloping experience, in ways both seductive and claustrophobic. With a guitar texture as nuanced as its vocal blend, it’s a study in haunted ambivalence.

6. FLY “Sky & Country” (ECM) For the jazz collective known as Fly — the tenor and soprano saxophonist Mark Turner, the bassist Larry Grenadier and the drummer Jeff Ballard — every gesture is a shift in the wind, every action a negotiation. But this standout album, its monument to a cohesive ideal, never feels rudderless or coy.

7. BRAD PAISLEY “American Saturday Night” (Arista Nashville) Country formalism meets pop literalism, with a few clanging duds but more than a few airtight contraptions. Mr. Paisley, earnest but mischievous, proves adept with cliché rather than afraid of it, and his thoughts on progress are even more welcome now than they were a year ago.

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Brad Paisley last month at the 43rd Annual Country Music Awards in Nashville.Credit
Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

8. DARCY JAMES ARGUE’S SECRET SOCIETY “Infernal Machines” (New Amsterdam) A wickedly intelligent dispatch from the fading border between orchestral jazz and post-rock and classical minimalism, this impressive debut radiates self-assurance, and an almost chilling steadiness of conviction.

9. RIHANNA “Rated R” (Def Jam) Domestic abuse apparently gave Rihanna a motive and a narrative for her tough-as-nails fourth album. Beyond a few rueful ballads, most plainly “Stupid in Love,” she sounds armored and imperious. That’s not remotely a bad thing, and neither are the flashes of her Barbadian roots.

10. OUMOU SANGARé “Seya” (World Circuit/Nonesuch) Ms. Sangaré, the great Malian singer, is in radiant form throughout “Seya,” her first album in five years: decrying forced marriages, paying homage to her elders, marveling at her own success. Her exuberance is more than contagious; it’s entirely credible.